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What’s Now: San Francisco

A monthly conversation at the Applied Innovation Exchange

What’s Now: San Francisco is an event series that each month features a remarkable person helping reinvent an important field exploding in innovation in the Bay Area right now. Our speakers explain the key developments in their field that people outside the field should know about, developments which could help solve the major challenges of our time. They talk about their current work, their latest thinking, the questions they are wrestling with at the moment. This series, produced by Reinvent in partnership with Capgemini, had such a successful first year that we’re now into year two and expanding to New York.

Each month, our featured speaker addresses an invite-only crowd of innovators and intellectuals who are doing interesting work in their own right, including people our featured guest would like to engage. Some are from the field under discussion, but many come from other industries, professions and fields. Our featured guest starts the evening by laying out his or her ideas either in a presentation, or through an initial interview with the event’s host. This is followed by a deep, complex conversation with the members of the audience, who build on the ideas, challenge the concepts, or raise questions.

The entire 90-minute conversation is captured in high-quality video so that the exclusive physical gathering can be viewed by sophisticated audiences interested in the latest thinking from leading thought leaders. The best ideas to emerge are later developed into short videos and posts that can reach wider audiences through social media.

The entire series cross-connects leading innovators from diverse fields and builds a network of networks over time. A key filter for selecting the featured speakers and invited guests is whether they are interested in fundamental innovation, or what we call reinvention, and are looking for big, bold, positive ways forward to help solve the many challenges of our time. Those who attend enjoy good food, drinks and networking before the program and after, and many return as regulars.

The events are free but space in Capgemini’s Applied Innovation Exchange is limited. If you are interested in getting an invite, tell us more about yourself by emailing contact@reinvent.net.

Innovators

Upcoming Conversations

When Vivienne Ming began her neuroscience PhD program in the early 2000s, she wanted to learn how to build cyborgs. Her classmates thought the idea was crazy. Fast forward fifteen years, and the idea doesn’t sound so crazy anymore.

Recent Conversations

At July’s What’s Now: San Francisco, Ken Goldberg took on those who are churning up fears of a near future where half of all current jobs are taken over by robots and powerful AI—let alone a slightly more distant future where robots rule over us.

Sunil Paul co-founded Sidecar, where he also served as CEO, in 2011. Sidecar was one of the earliest pioneers of the modern ride-sharing model and collected numerous ride-sharing and ride-hailing patents during the course of its five-year run. Now an unencumbered thought leader in the transportation space, Paul has devoted his time to thinking about the future of AVs and transportation in general.

New biomedical technologies are on the cusp of dramatically impacting not only healthcare and how we treat disease, but life itself. Join visionary biologist Andrew Hessel at What’s Now: San Francisco as he explores the extraordinary potential—and potential drawbacks—of gene editing and 3D printing in the field of biotech.

Many people have heard of bitcoin and might know something about blockchain, the technology system underlying the crypto currency. Yet few people understand how important blockchain technology could be not just for financial tech, but also for almost every other field.

Can we stop global warming in the next 30 years? This is the burning question of the 21st century and renowned environmentalist Paul Hawken used our March What’s Now: San Francisco gathering to give his answer: Yes we can.

Humans are bad at long-term decision-making – yet we need it more today than ever before. Dealing with climate change is just one of many examples. Steven Johnson, the bestselling author of ten books on science, tech, and the history of innovation including Ghost Map, Where Good Ideas Come From, and How We Got To Now, is now applying his mind toward helping drive innovation into long-term decision-making.

The Bay Area tech community, like much of the rest of the country, is still grappling with what Trump’s election will mean for the future of the United States. The future of many digital efforts—including the United States Digital Service, created by President Obama in 2014 to encourage people with tech expertise to do a tour of duty improving government—is one looming question.

The results of the 2016 election will have many repercussions for the San Francisco Bay Area, the tech sector, the innovation economy, California, not to mention the nation and world. One week after the election, California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom analyzed what really happened, what opportunities have now opened up, and what the best strategies are going forward.

The digital revolution has thoroughly transformed everything to do with information, and we’re now in the early stages of the digital revolution transforming the world of material things. In our October What’s Now: San Francisco event, Nick Pinkston, co-founder of one of San Francisco’s most intriguing next-generation manufacturing firms, Plethora, explained what’s happening in this new industrial revolution and reflected on the coming repercussions.

Jane McGonigal, the world-renowned game designer and bestselling author, believes in the power of games to enact change. She’s spent the last decade proving how interactive digital games can transform both individuals and societies. At the fourth What’s Now gathering, Jane shared the latest in her ground-breaking body of work related to creating super-empowered hopeful individuals.

Every day, the average American uses the same amount of energy that he or she would get from eating 1,000 cheeseburgers. That’s the equivalent of all Americans consuming 320 billion burgers worth of energy every 24 hours.

Kevin Kelly is one of the most original thinkers in the San Francisco Bay Area, and he has spent much of his life seeking out other cutting edge innovators in the region. Join us in our second gathering of What’s Now: San Francisco, which will double as a book party for Kevin and those who have come to know him over the years.

John Battelle is the perfect person to kick off the series What’s Now: San Francisco. John can not only tell the big-picture story of the Bay Area tech boom, but he also has new insights into one of the region’s key drivers of innovation – startups. His most recent startup is launching NewCo Shift, a new media brand covering the rise of NewCos and the biggest shift in business and society since the Industrial Revolution.